Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

This is the second book of Bill Bryson I have read, and like the first one, A Short History of Nearly Everything that I had read  more than a decade ago, The Body: A Guide to Occupants is a well researched and thoughtful book that has good information of human body presented in humor mixed and eloquent format that I found to be highly readable like his other book I had read.  Some of these concepts that the writer presented was not new to me, as I had studied some of these concepts in various biological science courses I had taken in high school, colleges and universities, but unlike the heavy tomes text books that I had to plough through in my student life, as I read Bill Bryson's book I found it more amusing and some of the tidbits about various scientists, accidental discoveries, and treacheries of some scientists not giving due credit of the original discoverers or inventors of their hard work shed light on the dynamics of world of science that mimic the larger outside world in

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is memorable and full of heart and life’s struggles, ups and downs, challenges, survivals and kindness portrayed in lives of many characters of this unforgettable novel. The author shined a light over Korean people who lived in Japan for many generations, their longing for their unreachable motherland and being forever “outsiders” in Japan. From the start to finish the author told a long but compulsively readable story, and described the harsh life of poor Koreans living in Japan. It also showed how hard work to provide for their family pushed them to work harder, and some of them were successful climbing out of the deep pit of poverty, and many were not so lucky. Pachinko is a well researched novel and is a pleasure to read.